Quite bad - 20%

So yeah, Acheron have been putting out Satanic black/death metal for 18 years. And somewhere along the line I’m sure somebody cared about them. But does that give them the right to release an album of covers? If the covers were good, perhaps. But “Tribute to the devil’s taint” makes Six Feet Under’s “Graveyard classics” look like actual classics.

Have you ever noticed that the same albums constantly show up on EGay, on people’s tradelists, and in the bargain bin of your local CD store? Just seeing the prevalence of certain titles in any of the above three venues should make your bad metal radar go off. Why doesn’t anyone want this disc, you ask? Because it sucks, I reply. Guess where you can find most of Acheron’s discography? While we’re playing a guessing game, guess whether or not “Tribute to the devil’s muzak” is up for trade in my Metal Archives collection list? Actually, I suppose I’m torpedoing my chances of successfully trading it by writing this review.

To give you a bit of background on Acheron, they are formerly a Floridian death metal band, now moved to the great state of Ohio. They have had about 38 billion people cycle in and out of the various instrumental positions, one of whom is dead, the rest of whom have filled the ranks of such bandmember turnover machines as Incantation, Burning Inside, and Death. All these dudes should get together and form their own band called “Unnoticed Floridian Death Metal Musician Band #231,589” which would have 20 drummers, 300 guitarists, 1 bassist (who you couldn’t hear anyway), and 58 vocalists. They would be (tha) shit, for sure.

For a bit more background, apparently creative force Vincent Crowley (vocals and bass) used to be a reverend in the Church of Satan, but quit a while ago. Pity, I’m sure they had one hell of a retirement plan. And here’s a quote from their Metal Archives page: “Vincent Breeding (Bruce Alan Breeding) studio guitarist 1992-95 is the owner of a porn magazine/website and heads-up David Duke’s EURO.” Great, an ex-member is a pornographer (not so bad) and a racist (very bad). Why didn’t I do my research before plucking this out of the bargain bin/trade list/under two dollars at EGay auctions?

Now for the dissection of this reborn blasphemic abomination. (Suffocation, I will sell you that song title for twenty bucks.) First of all, could people PLEASE stop covering “Black sabbath”! The original has some pacing problems already, and trying to death-metalize it always fails. If Vader can’t do it well, neither can you. And the rest of the disc pretty much plods along from there, with some songs more competently performed and recorded than others, and some abysmally worse. Speaking of Six Feet Under, didn’t they already do “War machine” by Kiss? Why yes, they did, and they did it better. “Dawn of Meggido” by Celtic Frost is goddamn terrible, battling it out with “Black sabbath” for the most steaming turd award. Mr. Crowley (please take my hand) even says in the liner notes that some of these songs are bad. Don’t sell yerself short, shitstain. The highlights, for what it’s worth, are probably the Motörhead cover and a re-recording of their own song at the blissful terminus of this fudge tunnel.

In the end, if you want to hear a song braised and death metalled properly, check out AIC’s “Them bones” as molested by Grave. If you want to get an album that you will eventually want to trade off to some other sucker who hasn’t done his/her homework properly, by all means send me an email.